I overheard Woodstock singing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" with the line "Eleven Swipers swiping." I think she's been watching too much Dora the Explorer.

That song is a favorite in our house. Snoopy's teacher tells me that Snoopy, having finished her paperwork early last Monday, requested to stand in front of the class and entertain them with a rendition of that song. Well, as anyone could have told her would happen, she got bogged down somewhere after "five golden rings" and couldn't remember the verses. So she calls out, "Would anyone out there like to come up and help me with the rest of this song?"

Apparently about nine kids all rushed up to stand beside her and sing with her. Of course, none of them knew the words either, so it didn't help much except to take the heat off of Snoopy, of whom I am prodigiously proud for her quick thinking and self-possession in getting out of an awkward situation.

We were eating lunch on Saturday, when Katrina asked me what radiant meant. I was having a little trouble explaining it to her, but I told her it meant glowing. She still looked confused, and I asked her where she'd heard it.

She told me that they had been doing name poems in class, where you pick a descriptive word for each letter of the name, and the teacher was doing an example for Mrs. R. Radiant was the word she chose for the R.

K. explains all of this to me, then she looks at me and says, "But Mrs. R. isn't glowing."

Cute stuff. Salt and pepper next to his heart? Seasoned professional charmer, pun intended.

One of the most funny things that my oldest son said happened as such: I would tell him in kindergarten to try to color in the lines as his teacher was requesting he try harder. He would always get very frustrated. Finally, in first grade, it came up again and he shouted "there ARE NO LIONS, there ARE NO LIONS!!!".

I can relate to the kid. You keep telling him to color in the 'lions' and for a year he is thinking these people are on crack. There are no lions on this page!"

I run headfirst into that kind of cognitive dissonance all the time in the tech world. People spout words without bothering to find out if their definition is the same as mine. Or if they are even using the same word. Homophones can be a bitch when you are 6 or when you are a geek.

When Spudboy, aka Kevin, was about eight I was listening to Lost 80's Lunch Hour on the local radio station, singing tunelessly along with Belinda Carlisle. Having wandered into the kitchen for a drink, he stopped, stood listening intently, and smiled as if he'd just had an enormous stroke of luck. "Mommy," he asked, "what is this song singing?" I repeated the line that had just played. "No," he said, "the part with earth." "Oh, 'Heaven Is a Place on Earth.' That's the name of the song."

Little has been going to the bathroom an awful lot. We had to pause our movie yet again the other night while she got up and went. Everyone scowled. "Well," she cried, "I have an attractive bladder! I mean an interactive bladder! Oh, you know what I mean!"

We have the talking Galileo ornament on our tree, and Dexter loves it. He recites its little monolouge as "Shuttlecraft to Enterprise. Shuttlecraft to Enterprise. Tock here. Happy howidays. Be raw and crossper."

See my tagline, for Ellie's version of a line from Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer.

Yesterday, my 6 year old started chanting "The roach, the roach, the roach is in the hall. We don't need no rug, just let the roach crawl." Unfortunately, there really was a roach in the hall, but at least it was dead.